Arrested for Hummus - Part I

The Irony of Huffing Polish

The day began, as they seldom do, with us ironically huffing solvents from a packet of pickled onion Monster Munch. 

Now, the day had not really begun in the strictest sense. Last night’s blackout had been hoisted from view. Revealing a room with all the requisite furnishings of student living: sunken couch, traffic cone-trophy, single A1 attempt at individuality blutacked to the wall. 

My friend Faris was making himself right at home. Spread the length of a two-man settee, barefoot, meandering along a thought, which, for those unlectured in his usual brew of profound nonsense, might have seemed of great significance.

Faris was a slow-moving party animal with an air of dishevelled genius. Though still in his early 20s, a complete indifference to the pace and trends of modern life left him wise beyond his years, beyond his time. 

A modern-day mystic who sustained himself on a steady diet of late-night baseball and inhaled deodorant. For Faris, a raid under our mystery host’s sink was a vital part of hunkering down for the morning. 

In that set of strong Iranian features, he wore a permanent curl of mischief underneath a brush moustache. Either up to something or nothing. A man born without any vague conception of what it was to give a fuck. 

Every few ramblings, Faris afforded himself a moment, and a deep, whimsical drag of furniture polish. The crisp packet puffing up like the anatomy of an imperilled blowfish. Then, not without a certain grace, he decanted another blast into the ol’ one-eyed monster. 

As if suddenly regathering his manners, Faris offered out the grab bag.

“Aw man, you shouldn’t have,” I accepted, courteously. Carrying the joke on down into the scorched extremities of my lungs - with one great-big ironic huff. 

If, dear reader, you are thinking, there is no irony to be found in the recreational inhalation of household cleaning products - well, I’d certainly be in a better position to comment than you, now, wouldn’t I?

See appendix: the irony of glue huffing.

Granted, there are only so many puffs on the magic canister, before any irony fast fades, like oh so many particles of exhaled aerosol in a stranger’s sitting room. Two. And this was my second and final trip to the ramshackle premises of Huffington Manor*.

As far as daring ironic statements go, gasping down toxic compounds sure is rough on the old pipes. Luckily, any harshness was offset by the harsher sting of the pickled starch residue. Furniture polish and Monster Munch, who knew? Who, but Faris? A pairing fit for the Devil’s dinner party, if ever there were one. 

Such was the wonder of the man, the irony of Faris’ recreational solvent habit never dissipated.

A lungful of chemicals goes down like a lungful of chemicals. The effects, more side effects than anything. A groggy head-high that has all the hallmarks of a low. The no-good wooziness of enclosed scrubbers and devoted varnishers.

Katty, a friend of ours arrived, presumably. In my mind, the one responsible for recounting this story, she simply appeared. Give me a break, most narrators haven’t bagged solvents in the opening line. 

Late to the polish party was ‘the Hurricane’. Christened after the tropical cyclone of the same name, Katrina tore a similar path of destruction through any city that stood in her way. 

All springy ringlets and fluttering eyelashes, to be taken in by her appearance was a mistake. The London-born hardwoman held an off-kilter merry-go-round wit, which would take you for a ride - or, get caught on the wrong side of it, batter you halfway to death. That trademark cackle, the last noise you’d ever hear.

The kind of friends who die laughing at you brunching on lethal substances are the only kind of friends I ever wanted.

Although a lady in appearance only, Katty’s tastes were still a touch more dignified than ours. In all fairness, any trace of dignity was an immediate disqualifier. Between hacks and coughs, we wheezed out allegations of snobbery, for as long as it was funny - or, senses dulled, maybe a crack or two more.

“It’s the most important meal of the day,” Kat reasoned. Fairly making the point that our gas breakfast was no substitute for a liquid one. Absolutely parched from the dusting of our respiratory tracts, a trip to the local supermarket was definitely in order.

In a moment of lightheadedness, I mistook a James Bonds DVD anthology box set for a four-pack of Red Bull. Tearing the case clean in two. After regaining a couple of my senses, I stopped short of chugging back the director’s cut of Moonraker.

You can see where I was coming from.

Abruptly, our welcome felt overstayed. We exchanged the universal look of accomplished troublemakers. The one that, if confirmed with words, would translate as “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

There was one crucial deficiency in our otherwise very achievable plan of buying alcohol: money. From prior experience, I knew it to be a real dealbreaker.

Giddy with irony, we hatched a plan to knock over the local supermarket.

Read part 2 of the hummus trilogy here.

APPENDIX - The irony of huffing glue

The irony arises from the juxtaposition of our carefree attitude towards glue huffing with the relation of its harmful effects and societal disapproval. 

Maybe there’s an irony in the fact I’ve, apparently, huffed enough glue that I can’t definitively say if that is ironic or not? Maybe not. 

*Thinking back there might have been a tertiary huffing - but the glue wiped clean any record in real time. Now if that isn’t ironic, I don’t know what is. Clearly.